Barbara Keeley: It is interesting that the Secretary of State cannot follow his own advice about not making operational matters in the NHS political footballs. Perhaps we can try again. The number of nurse training places has been cut by thousands since 2010—a key issue given the need of hospitals to reach safe staffing levels. The Royal College of Nursing has said that Labour’s plans for 20,000 more nurses are absolutely necessary. Does the Minister agree?

Andrew Lansley: The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting question, and not a hypothetical one—let us face it: he is referring to a decision of the kind taken in 2003. We have asked today how many people would sign petitions, write to their Member of Parliament or go to one of four designated places in a constituency in order to do something. Well, in my recollection, 2003 was the point when it was most likely that large numbers of the public would have taken some specific action in relation to a Government policy that they had not sanctioned, that certainly was not part of any previous manifesto promise and that they felt was wrong. That raises the following question: what would have happened in 2003 had recall been available?
	I say this in a disinterested way, because I did not vote for the invasion of Iraq and so this would not have affected me, but I think there are those who would argue that that is what it is all about—that in those circumstances members of the pubic would have had an opportunity to say, “Not in our name” by setting up petitions and giving notice of the intention to recall. Throughout the period of the conflict in Iraq there would have been a rebellion among the electorate.
	Is that right or wrong? I happen to think that necessarily it is wrong. To return to the constitutional point, we are a representative democracy in which we owe our constituents our collective judgment. We come here not as an independent legislature separate from the decisions of the Government, but to form a Government and sustain them through the legislature. That Government have to make decisions and secure the majority of this House, and we have to stick by that. This proposal would have completely undermined that.
	If we are looking for a way to undermine the proposal, let us imagine that it had been possible for the organisers of protests in 2003 to focus on the Prime Minister’s constituency and get 20% of the voters there to sign a petition. They would have done so, even though they
	recognised that there was no way they could get 50% on the subsequent vote, but it would have had such a destabilising impact on the Prime Minister of the day, in circumstances in which he was doing something that was deeply unpopular but that he felt was right—whether or not he was right is not the matter. I cannot see how a responsible Parliament in a representative democracy could go down that path.

George Young: I want to make a brief intervention in this debate, because so far no one who has sat on the Standards and Privileges Committee has spoken. During the course of the debate, a number of assertions have been made about how that Committee operates. We heard from one hon. Member that there was risk of a tabloid campaign leading to the upholding of a complaint against a Member who would then find himself confronted with a 10% petition in his constituency. Another Member asserted exactly the opposite—that the Standards and Privileges Committee was a cosy clique that protected other Members from justice. Let me therefore explain the Committee’s role, the environment in which it operates and the very real constraints on what its members can do.
	First, there is an independent Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. That commissioner, who is independent of Members, investigates the complaint and produces a report saying whether or not the complaint should be upheld. Members of Parliament and members of the Committee have no role whatever in the production of that report, which is always published. Members are then free, if they so wish, to go against the finding of the independent commissioner, but they of course need
	very good reasons so to do. They are going to have to stand up in public; they cannot simply say that they do not uphold the complaint, as reasons have to be produced.
	One quite recent change is the introduction of lay members on that Committee. It is true that the lay members do not have a vote, but they have something much more effective—a veto. If they disagree with the elected members of the Standards and Privileges Committee, that disagreement is put into the pubic domain. Any attempt by Members of Parliament to shield a colleague from a wholly justified complaint would be shot to bits by the lay members publishing a report in disagreement. Further changes are that the Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee cannot come from the Government Benches. When I chaired the Committee, there was no Government majority on it. The notion that the members of this Committee, in the words of one Member, “chase the Whips’ bauble” is a gross injustice to the independently minded MPs who serve on the Committee. I think they would deeply resent some of the allegations made against them.